by Islamophobia and Islamophobic incidents on campus. Alsultany is also known for her book “Arabs and Muslims in the Media: Race and Representation after 9/11,” published in 2012, and for her work co-editing “Arab and Arab American Feminisms: Gender, Violence, and Belonging” and “Between the Middle East and the Americas: The Cultural Politics of Diaspora.” At an event celebrating the scholarship of Alsultany last Thursday, several students, colleagues and faculty members spoke about their experiences working with Alsultany. Aside from her academic accolades, the panelists spoke of Alsultany’s work to expand and improve campus prayer rooms, her role in arranging a closed town hall meeting for Middle Eastern, North African and Muslim students following the murder of three Muslim students at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill in February 2015, her advocacy for the ME/NA box to be included on all University forms that require demographic information, and her work in organizing the first Islamophobia speak-out. June Howard, faculty member in English, American culture and women’s studies, admired Alsultany’s kindness and perseverance with these challenging topics. “She is a deeply beloved person here at the University of Michigan broadly and certainly in the department of American Culture and AMAS,” Howard said. “Whatever good we do in the future because we will be following in Evelyn’s footsteps.” Marjorie Horton, former assistant dean for undergraduate education in LSA, said Alsultany has demonstrated expertise and commitment to diversity, teaching and leadership. “We all know Evelyn as a professor who is truly exceptional in caliber and impact of her contributions in all domains to our college, the broader campus community and nationally, and most importantly, to our students individually and collectively,” Horton said. Law student Areeba Jibril said through Alsultany’s course, “From Harems to Terrorists,” she learned the language she needed to address Islamophobia in the classroom and in the community. “I heard so many good things about (Alsultany’s course), I was going to save it for my senior year and I’m so glad that I didn’t, because finally I found a space where I could walk in and feel seen.” Later, Alsultany spoke with The Daily about her journey at the University of Michigan, and what she’s looking forward to in her new post. TMD: Take us through your journey at the University of Michigan. From teaching, mentoring, administrative work, advocacy, diversity work and more — had you imagined it would be this way, and what has been the most rewarding? The seed was planted when I was an undergraduate student here in the early 1990s and it was planted through the classes that I took in ethnic studies and women’s studies that I found transformative in terms of how I understood my own identity in relation to the social and political world. So, as an Arab American, Muslim American, Latina, I had access to Latino studies classes that were meaningful to me, but in order to learn about Arabs or Muslims, a student — which is common at many universities — would take Middle East studies classes and you’d learn about Arab countries. I took Islam 101, and these are very important classes, but I was looking for something in particular at the time and those classes weren’t filling that thing I was looking for. There seemed to be a gap in terms of understanding the experiences of Arabs and Muslims in the U.S. context and filling that gap is what has shaped my scholarship on the racialization of Arabs and Muslims in the U.S. and it also shaped my teaching and my service work. I was hired here in 2005, it was 10 years after I graduated and I never imagined that when I left here in 1995 I would become a professor. I never imagined I would become a professor here. I never imagined that I would help to build an Arab and Muslim American studies program. So, I guess my message to undergrads is you really don’t know where your future is going to take you and especially when you’re graduating from here. But I never imagined that I would have this incredible opportunity to bring my dream to fruition and create an Arab and American studies program along other ethnic studies units in the Department of American Culture and also, as I mentioned yesterday [during the celebration event], I didn’t do it alone. Nadine Naber was a professor here. She was hired in 2003. I was hired in 2005. She’s now a professor at the University of Illinois in Chicago and we had a very similar vision and together created what the program is today. We created courses, internship opportunities, programming, we piloted a certificate program that eventually led to the minor, which is now only one of three of its kind that look at Arabs, Middle Easterners and Muslims in the U.S. context, and the other two are U-M Dearborn and San Francisco State. I’ll add that the most rewarding thing has been working with students for whom the classes and minor are meaningful. There’s a synergy that happens between what this minor is trying to do, what the classes are trying to do and then the students who are really looking for that thing. So it’s been rewarding to offer learning opportunities that will help students thrive in the very difficult world that we’re living in, and also an academic home for Arab and Muslim students on campus, and it’s also been very rewarding to work with them on creating a more inclusive campus. TMD: After all this time — both as a student and now a faculty member — how does it feel to be leaving the University of Michigan? I’ve been going through a grieving process, and when I first accepted the job at USC, I felt really, really sad. Everyone was congratulating me and I … I just felt this extreme sense of loss. I had accepted this incredible opportunity and I was just feeling sad all the time. And when I tell people that I felt sad, they would say, “Well why don’t you just stay? Just stay. Cancel the acceptance and just stay here.” But the point is that it’s hard to leave a place that’s been so formative to who I am and it’s been a place where I’ve — I didn’t come here an expert, I became an expert in my field, I became the director of a program, I grew into some leadership positions, I developed my teaching. So it’s really hard to leave, especially the program that means so much to me, and my incredible colleagues and students, but I am also proud to leave with the Arab and Muslim American studies program in such a strong position and to have contributed something to this campus that some students find meaningful and who will be able to continue to benefit from it after I leave. TMD: You’ve been at the University through a number of tumultuous and challenging times, and students, faculty and staff have all cited your strength, your advocacy, your willingness to be a mentor throughout those times, and of course, year-round, too. So what are your primary motivations for this work, specifically in these particularly challenging times? In the years that I’ve been here, every year, some kind of crisis happens. And I think that’s common at college campuses across the nation that are reflecting the urgent social political issues of our time. Over the years, a student would come to me with an issue and say something like, “We’re 2 — Tuesday, December 11, 2018 The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com News ALEC COHEN/Daily Sixth row: Sean Lang, Orion Sang, Mike Persak, Jason Rowland, Will Stewart, Jack Brandon, Efe Edevbie, Matt Vailliencourt, Jordan Wolff (not pictured) Fifth row: Colin Beresford, Jacob Shames, Brian Kuang, Ethan Wolfe, Evan Aaron, Erika Shevchek, Sam Rosenberg, Laura Dzubay Fourth row: Andrew Hiyama, Robert Hefter, Ashley Tjhung, Nisa Khan, Robert Lesser, Jeremy Kaplan, Tara Jayaram, Jennifer Meer, Tess Tobin, Julia Moss, Katelyn Carroll Third row: Julia Montag, Jeremiah Vanderhelm, Max Kuang, Dominic Polsinelli, Danielle Yacobson, Zainab Bhindarwala, Anu Roy-Chaudhury, Sophie Sherry, Kaela Theut, Paige Voeffray, Laney Byler, Joseph Fraley, Shima Sadaghiyani, Maitreyi Anantharaman, Madeline Turner Second row: Avery Friedman, Madeleine Gaudin, Dayton Hare, Alexa St. John, Riyah Basha, Sofia Lynch Front: Amelia Cacchione, Emma Richter, Katelyn Mulcahy, Avi Sholkoff, Cameron Hunt, Rebecca Tarnopol 420 Maynard St. Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1327 www.michigandaily.com ARTS SECTION arts@michigandaily.com SPORTS SECTION sports@michigandaily.com ADVERTISING dailydisplay@gmail.com NEWS TIPS news@michigandaily.com LETTERS TO THE EDITOR tothedaily@michigandaily.com EDITORIAL PAGE opinion@michigandaily.com NATHAN GUPTA Business Manager 734-418-4115 ext. 1241 nathankg@michigandaily.com ALEXA ST. 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For personal use only. Generate and solve Sudoku, Super Sudoku and Godoku puzzles at sudokusyndication.com! TUESDAYS puzzle by sudokusyndication.com “My message to undergrads is you really don’t know where your future is going to take you and especially when you’re graduating from here” CL A SS OF 2018 PROF From Page 1 See PROF, Page 3